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April 2007

April 30, 2007

Antoine Walker used to call himself a "volume shooter" and that shouldn't be taken as a positive. Efficient shooting is a far more valuable commodity. Right now, the Mavs are getting more volume from Jet Terry.

He was 7 of 19 in Game 4... 4 of 11 in Game 3... 12 of 23 in Game 2 ... and 6 of 14 in Game 1...

so, that's 29 of 67 overall, 43.3 percent and 7 of 25 from 3, 28.0 percent. That's just not going to cut it. In the regular season, Terry, who has taken more shots than any Mav in this series - one more than Dirk - shot 48.4 percent from the field and 43.8 from 3. Terry has taken nine more 3s than Jerry Stackhouse in the series, who's taken the second-most from downtown. Terry is only fourth on the team in getting to the foul line. He's 13 of 16.

Here's Terry's thoughts on his shooting in the series:

"Some of those looks are too good to pass up, but at the same time you want to be decisive and make sure you get to the basket, especially in critical stretches like the fourth quarter (in Game 4). We shot so many 3s and that's not winning basketball. Winning basketball is either get to the free-throw line or get some buckets in the paint."

It's been kind of weird to listen to the Mavs during this series. As they're losing games, they're also being very complimentary to their foe. Golden State is very dangerous, a great team, explosive, etc. etc., they've been saying. I've been pretty surpised by those niceties, and sort of an acknowledgment that they're getting whipped in the hustle categories for the most part and that they really aren't sure how to stop it.

So, anyway, the series is still on. If the Mavs can hold on and take Game 5, the pressure starts to build a little more on Golden State. Then they've got to really be thinking about closing it out at home in Game 6, not wanting to have to win a Game 7 here after being up 3-1.

Stackhouse was asked if he believes the Warriors' surprising success can actually increase the pressure on them to put the Mavs out. Here's what he had to say:

"Write that, maybe they'll read that and tighten up a little bit. But right now they're playing loose and with a lot of confidence. They've said from the start that if they came out and got swept by us, then it's nothing -- they were the eight-seed and we were the No. 1 seed. But, at the same time we've got our backs against the wall. Now the pressure's on the them. It's hard to close out a series. We did it three times last year and it was three of the hardest games. We had to fight and hopefully if we're going to go down, we're going to go down fighting the same way and it's going to be one of the toughest things they have to do, to knock us out of this series."

“Too discouraged,” Avery said. “Ok. I’m tired of hearing about how they’ve taken him out of his game and any lack of confidence. You’re just not supposed to have that. I wasn’t the best of players and didn’t have the best of skills, but you’re not going to shake my confidence.

“We need all of our players to be confident, to be resilient, to be persistent and that’s what I want to see tomorrow. if I don’t see it in shootaround, I’m going to be highly upset. I need to have it going into that game tomorrow night. We have to be confident and really show what we’re doing.”

Dirk has sounded frustrated and despondent throughout the series when it comes to his offensive game. He’s shooting just 41 percent and averaging 20 points, both numbers considerably down from the regular season.

“They’ve got a lot of athletes out there,” Dirk said. “They make it tough on you. They’re smaller and really sit down on my legs. I can’t put the ball on the floor the way I want to or get to my to my spots where I want to be at. They’re all about 6-5 to 6-8, really the same size, which has really been making it hard.”

Dirk is 7-foot. Some might argue he needs to make it tough on them.

“I’ve got to take what they give me and they don’t really give me a lot,” Dirk continued. “I’ve got to make stuff happen, help out on defense more, hit the glass harder, as hard as I can, get some extra possessions. If I have a shot, try to knock it down. If I don’t, move the ball and help somebody else knock it down.”

It’s a dire situation. No other way the Mavs can spin it, so they’re not even trying to. The best-of-7 is down to a best-of-1. Well, for the Mavs it’s three straight best-of-1’s starting tomorrow night at AAC.

They need to win the first one just to get to the next one back in Oakland on Thursday. One at a time. Yeah, yeah.

“We’ve got to keep fighting,” Jerry Stackhouse said. “The series is not over. We’ve seen it happen just last year, a series was 3-1 and the team came back and won it. We’ve been a team that has had multiple winning streaks during the course of the year -- 10 games or more -- so three games shouldn’t seem like a whole lot, but we’ve got to get it together.”

Josh Howard said, “We kind of shot ourselves in the foot.” And he played the lesson angle: “We had an opportunity to go up with a nice cushion, but we just didn’t follow through on the game plan. It’s a learning experience. We’ve got to move on to the next page.”

And here’s Devean George: “We felt we were in a good position. We felt we were playing pretty good ball and starting to look like our old selves on both ends as far as helping each other out and as far as executing on offense. We just didn’t put a full game together. It’ll come.”

The TNT gang isn’t too impressed with the job being done by Dirk Nowitzki and with good reason. The Bavarian Bomber has bombed so far, but Dirk and Co. are still kicking.

Charles Barkley is actually in Dirk’s camp and wore a No. 41 jersey on set. Surprised? The Chuckster is Public Enemy No. 1 in NoCal right now.

Here’s a sampling of the words spewed by Chuck and his cohorts:

Dick Stockton: “For some reason the Warriors and Don Nelson know him better than anyone, have found the key to this guy.”

Reggie Miller on Avery Johnson saying he’s not concerned about Dirk’s struggles but with his supporting cast: “I disagree with Avery on that. If I’ve got my MVP candidate I put my head down, I don’t accept the double teams and I’d be aggressive offensively. (Nowitzki) is the one who has to carry them offensively through these trying times.”

Miller on Dirk’s lack of aggressiveness: “In a series like this (Nowitzki) should be averaging 30 points and around 20-25 shots a game.”

The ever-resilient Warriors swallowed the defending Western Conference champions in an avalanche of sound and fourth-quarter 3-pointers Sunday night at Oracle Arena. The 103-99 victory moved Golden State to within one win of the conference semifinals . . . with three games to do it in.

“All we can do now is win one game at a time,” Nowitzki said. “It sounds ridiculous.”

More like tragic. The Mavs leave Northern California for North Texas trailing 3-1 and unless they run off a three-game winning streak, they’ll go down as the first No. 1 seed ever to lose to an eighth seed in a best-of-seven series.

“If there’s a team that can come back and win three in row,” Warriors coach Don Nelson said, “that’s the team that can do it.”

Visions of a championship have been replaced by a dead-eye focus on Game 5, the first true must-win for the Mavs since Game 6 of the NBA Finals.

They lost that one, putting the finishing touches on a four-game collapse to Miami. Losing to a team that needed to win on the last game of the regular season just to get into the playoffs may be more painful.

“The only thing we’re thinking about is winning a home game,” Mavs coach Avery Johnson said.

The Mavs wanted to treat Sunday as a Game 7 and they played as if their season hung in the balance for long stretches. But the Warriors had flashes throughout that swung momentum and ultimately proved the difference.

“We didn’t expect to be down 3-1,” Jerry Stackhouse said. “We felt the early games were going to be a test and by now we would have things figured out.”

The Mavs tried to find their way on Saturday, as Stackhouse and Jason Terry called a team-only meeting. The gist of the no-holds barred session without the coaches: Don’t leave anything in the tank.

Stackhouse, Terry, Howard and Nowitzki all had their shooting spurts, but also made their share of mistakes. The Mavs had 19 turnovers, 11 coming from that foursome, and held leads of nine points in the first, second and third quarter, and seven with 7 minutes left.

Getting ready got Game 4 in a few hours means forgetting Game 3. G-State has manhandled the Mavs twice in this series, including the 18-point blowout here two nights ago.

“After tough losses, it takes 24 hours to get over it,” Dirk said today. “We feel better, but this obviously is not a position we want to be in. We’ve got to approach this as a Game 7 and come out swinging from all angles, have a bounce in our step. If you think of the games they won, they caught fire early and kind of got away from us and I think we have to find a way to stay in the game and keep it a close game, especially when it comes down to the fourth quarter.”

Avery is hoping his guys dig in and fight. For whatever reason, the Mavs haven't come out with much emotion in any of the three games.

“We’ve got to have that bunker mentality that we know we have to come out here and scratch and claw for 48 minutes or however long it takes,” General said. “More than results, because we are so result-oriented, which we haven’t been all year, we’ve been about details and little things and charges and loose balls and rebounding and playing every short period of quarters and the results taking care of themselves. We can’t fast forward to the end. We’ve got to do all the little things we’ve done all year that have made us have a pretty good year so far.”

April 28, 2007

What’s been more surprising: all the twisting layups made by Baron Davis, Jason Richardson and Co. or all the wide-open jumpers clanked by Dirk, Jet and friends? Avery has talked about his boys missing layups throughout the series. I didn’t know his definition of layups was so liberal.

“When you think about Jet and Dirk, especially shooting wide-open shots, we consider those layups,” General said. “That’s not an arrogant statement. When I say layups, it’s not just the ones inside. It’s those 15-16 footers that are wide open.”

The Mavs are shooting just 40.7 percent in the series, down from 46.7 percent during the regular season. A 50-percent shooter this season, Dirk is at 38.3 percent in the three games and has missed all five 3-pointers. Terry has shot just 40 percent (10 of 25) in the two losses, and is 4 of 17 (23.5 percent) beyond the arc.

Jerry Stackhouse is at 25 percent. Harris and Josh Howard, both at 47 percent, are the only two regular scorers shooting with any level of consistency.

“It’s been weird,” Dirk admitted. “We haven’t made a nice little run together. I don’t know. It seems like guys get on in different stretches, but we haven’t played well together as a team. I don’t know what it is.”

Jet hasn’t ripped off one of those stretches when four or five straight jumpers go down. Dirk hasn’t wowed the crowd with one of those fade-away displays. Stack is still searching for that corner 3-pointer groove.

“We should just be [ticked] off because we’re not playing at the level we want to be playing at,” Stack said. “Everybody’s got to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’ve got to pick it up.’”